Follow-up: Dual Lung Transplant

FOLLOW-UP

A. Gaining 25 pounds since her May surgery, Cristina Ortega weighs 97 pounds and is, in the words of her mother, ''a miracle'' guided by her twin sister in heaven.

''She's doing very well physically, but emotionally it's still very hard,'' said Silvia Diaz. ''It's very hard on all of us. We've been through so much.''

Although unaware of it through much of their young lives, Cris, 23, and her twin Vicky inherited a rare genetic disease from their father that slowly starved the once-athletic high school and college cheerleaders of oxygen.

Hoping to avoid the early deaths to which familial idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis condemned their father and paternal grandfather to, the twins planned to undergo lung transplants the same way they came into the world: together. They made a pact to share the lungs from a single donor.

Fate, however, broke their bond. A day before the donor lungs became available, Vicki went into cardiac arrest, never regaining consciousness. Cris woke up from her successful surgery at Shands Hospital in Gainesville only to learn her sister had died.

''We still ask why, but we count our blessings,'' Silvia Diaz said. ''Vicky is an angel up there helping Cristina, and we feel she's happy.''